Tobacco ad ban struck down

A Worcester ordinance prohibiting outdoor advertising of tobacco products has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.

“While an advertisement in Worcester specifically promoting sales of blunt wraps in Worcester promotes unlawful activity, an advertisement in Worcester promoting such sales in the nearby city of Fitchburg (where sales are apparently lawful) or an advertisement promoting such sales generally, without reference to location, is within the scope of First Amendment protection,” U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock concluded.

“Worcester may not properly bar those who seek to disseminate information so as to enable its citizens to make better informed decisions about transactions that are legal elsewhere,” the judge reasoned. “The broad sweep of the Ordinance suggests that the defendants did not consider how to tailor the restrictions so as not unduly to burden the plaintiffs’ free speech rights and the rights of adults to truthful information about tobacco products.”